What about Super disservice with characters like Goten, Trunks and Yamcha?

Discussion specifically regarding the "Dragon Ball Super" TV series premiering July 2015 in Japan, including individual threads for each episode.

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What about Super disservice with characters like Goten, Trunks and Yamcha?

Post by jeffbr92 » Wed Mar 28, 2018 3:15 pm

Dragon Ball Super has ended, so I guess we might have some time to argue the good and specially the bad points of the series, mine is character usage. Sure it has improved from what was GT: a Goku show. But don't you think they could have done better with characters like Goten, Trunks and Yamcha? Some might even include Boo, Tenshinhan, Piccolo or even Chaozu (feel free to do that), but let's focus on these three:


Goten and Trunks were the new generation of Saiyans introduced in the Boo arc, that most characters relied on their potential to defeat the main antagonist, even though they failed, I could still see future on them. Not that I expected Super to be a series with the duo as the protagonists, but with them having an active role or something.

I hated that the show ended without even trying to make them look a bit older as the time had passed, I mean Super ended on age 780, EoZ is on 784, so we should really expect that in just four years they grew up from that:
[spoiler]Image[/spoiler]

To that?
[spoiler]Image[/spoiler]

I really would dig an in-between design to them before EoZ, something like:
[spoiler]Image[/spoiler]

But this is not only about aesthetics, let's talk about how their characters were poorly used, often brought to the sidelines by other characters saying they were just kids to do anything, though they relied on them in the past to defeat a genocidal monster, hypocrisy much? No to mention their whole subplot taking care of a Island was offscreen. Anyway it's a shame that we only saw a couple of scenes of Goten, Trunks and Gotenks taking part of the action and sadly none of these will be worth remembering.



About Yamcha...

Well, people might say: "oh but who cares about Yamcha", "he just serves to be a meme", "he's useless" opinions only, as there are people who would enjoy if he had better moments in the show than just being used a "funny" gag.

Not saying I wanted Yamcha to be the strongest human ever, but at least let him take part of the action, Krillin was retired, but they made him come back.

I'm probably beating a dead horse at this point, but I would vastly prefer Yamcha instead of Roshi (either in RoF and ToP), come on Roshi said he would leave things to the new generations of fighters, I know he made a speech about how he learned with his students that he could still reach new heights, but I still don't like it much.

Why not have Yamcha fighting again? Improve his techniques? Overcome his fears? Instead they prefered to reinforce the point of the fanbase seeing him just like a joke, a meme, a character that never should been taken seriously and that's sad.
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Re: What about Super disservice with characters like Goten, Trunks and Yamcha?

Post by GamerSkull » Wed Mar 28, 2018 4:57 pm

I care quite a bit about Yamcha. But at this point, I realize that I just have to accept the position he's in because it's unlikely to change anytime soon. And I really do not want that fact to serve as a detriment to my enjoyment of the Dragon Ball franchise. It sucks but it is what it is, I guess. :(

As for Goten and Trunks, this show could have provided a good opportunity to actually do something with them (especially since I like Goten more but he doesn't really have much as a character).
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Re: What about Super disservice with characters like Goten, Trunks and Yamcha?

Post by Chibi Gohan » Wed Mar 28, 2018 11:45 pm

jeffbr92 wrote:
I hated that the show ended without even trying to make them look a bit older as the time had passed, I mean Super ended on age 780, EoZ is on 784, so we should really expect that in just four years they grew up from that:
[spoiler]Image[/spoiler]

To that?
[spoiler]Image[/spoiler]


Sure! It's not like it's unprecedented. Compare Goku's appearance from when he defeated King Piccolo to the 23rd Tournament.


As for the rest... Yes I would've preferred seeing Goten and Trunks receive more important roles in Super. I'm not sure what more we should expect from Yamcha though. He's been a joke of a character for so long...
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Re: What about Super disservice with characters like Goten, Trunks and Yamcha?

Post by Bullza » Thu Mar 29, 2018 4:00 am

Goten and Trunks had enough screen time at the time.

They took too much of Movie 10. Took up all of Movie 11 which is the worst one. Trunks took up a lot of Movie 12. Trunks had more screen time than favourites like Krillin, Piccolo and Gohan in Movie 13. They even took up way too much of the JSAT special.

They're not good characters. Episode 1 was worrying because it seemed fluke it would go that way.

Them having such a small roles in Super has been fantastic for the show.

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Re: What about Super disservice with characters like Goten, Trunks and Yamcha?

Post by Lord Beerus » Thu Mar 29, 2018 8:18 am

There's not much you can do with characters that either Toriyama doesn't care about anymore or didn't have much personality to begin with.

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Re: What about Super disservice with characters like Goten, Trunks and Yamcha?

Post by AnzuMazaki » Thu Mar 29, 2018 10:36 am

GamerSkull wrote:I care quite a bit about Yamcha. But at this point, I realize that I just have to accept the position he's in because it's unlikely to change anytime soon. And I really do not want that fact to serve as a detriment to my enjoyment of the Dragon Ball franchise. It sucks but it is what it is, I guess. :(
I used to rant and complain about the meme transformation...but I have since stopped because the whole thing has become mainstream now, even showing up more in official propaganda :(

The only thing we Yamcha fans can do now is make fanstuff dedicated to him, and play as him in video games.
One day he will become a good character again but not yet.

At least Trunks and Goten has a small chance of being major supporting characters though :D
I hope they are not done dirty like the earthlings were.
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Re: What about Super disservice with characters like Goten, Trunks and Yamcha?

Post by GamerSkull » Thu Mar 29, 2018 11:54 am

AnzuMazaki wrote:
GamerSkull wrote:I care quite a bit about Yamcha. But at this point, I realize that I just have to accept the position he's in because it's unlikely to change anytime soon. And I really do not want that fact to serve as a detriment to my enjoyment of the Dragon Ball franchise. It sucks but it is what it is, I guess. :(
I used to rant and complain about the meme transformation...but I have since stopped because the whole thing has become mainstream now, even showing up more in official propaganda :(

The only thing we Yamcha fans can do now is make fanstuff dedicated to him, and play as him in video games.
One day he will become a good character again but not yet.

At least Trunks and Goten has a small chance of being major supporting characters though :D
I hope they are not done dirty like the earthlings were.
Yah, and there's DBZ Elsewhere. A really good fanmanga about Yamcha that I enjoy.
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Re: What about Super disservice with characters like Goten, Trunks and Yamcha?

Post by Baggie_Saiyan » Thu Mar 29, 2018 12:02 pm

Bullza wrote:Goten and Trunks had enough screen time at the time.

They took too much of Movie 10. Took up all of Movie 11 which is the worst one. Trunks took up a lot of Movie 12. Trunks had more screen time than favourites like Krillin, Piccolo and Gohan in Movie 13. They even took up way too much of the JSAT special.

They're not good characters. Episode 1 was worrying because it seemed fluke it would go that way.

Them having such a small roles in Super has been fantastic for the show.
Never understood why fans cared so much for Goten/Trunks especially since half way through the Buu arc it is evident Toriyama didn't care for them. They were only there for the fusion gimmick and once Gotenks failed that was it no relevancy for the rest of the arc. In EoZ both of them show no interest in competing in the tournament with Goten only concerned about getting his dick wet instead of his fists dirty and he then got owned by Pan, a toddler.

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Re: What about Super disservice with characters like Goten, Trunks and Yamcha?

Post by PsionicWarrior » Thu Mar 29, 2018 12:30 pm

For sure I would have liked some timelap between arcs to get Goten and Trunks grow older and also have them take bigger part in the story. Maybe in Super's future...

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Re: What about Super disservice with characters like Goten, Trunks and Yamcha?

Post by precita » Thu Mar 29, 2018 12:34 pm

It's obvious Trunks and Goten will be used again when we move to EOZ.

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Re: What about Super disservice with characters like Goten, Trunks and Yamcha?

Post by JulieYBM » Thu Mar 29, 2018 12:43 pm

If Toriyama wasn't obligated to write new material for Lunch, Tao Pai-Pai, the Tsuru-sen'nin or Upa and Bora I don't see why he should be obligated to do new things with Goten and Trunks if he doesn't want to. Having those two not be interested in fighting sets them apart from the other characters as it is. That's a good thing!

One day I would love to see Shida Naotoshi animate a new fight for Yamcha, if only because it would be so unexpected.
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Re: What about Super disservice with characters like Goten, Trunks and Yamcha?

Post by Robo4900 » Thu Mar 29, 2018 5:04 pm

jeffbr92 wrote:Sure it has improved from what was GT: a Goku show.
Nah, it's no better.

Super is the Goku and Vegeta show. Sure, GT was Goku and Pan, with Gill and sometimes Trunks, but the thing is, GT actually did something quite clever with the side-characters; there are so many of them, it's hard to fit all of them into a given space without having really long episodes, or terrible pacing, so the side characters generally would appear for brief guest spots to get their time in the limelight. This can be quite an effective approach; Piccolo's death didn't have much build-up, but it strikes you suddenly, as death often does in reality, so you get a real pang from it. So, Piccolo's time in the limelight ends up really kicking you in the face. And on a similar subject, Mr. Satan's near-retirement at the tournament was quite touching. Granted, it was a bit of a forgettable episode in terms of plot, but the characterisation was solid, and it generally felt like just a decent breather/filler episode between arcs, with some emotional weight from Mr. Satan's grief at Boo's nonexistence. It also had a pretty strong familial vibe to it, which I would argue ties into the Super #17 arc's crux of #17 and #18 having to face off, and that familial connection permanently getting severed, with #17's death. I think it's fairly obvious quite a lot of thought went into plotting this out.

In Super, Boo has been teased, then snubbed twice, and really in general, they've shoved a lot of characters in, but poorly-written them, and the end result is just not any good IMO(For example: Roshi and Tenshinhan's recruitment into the TOP, and the Gohan and Videl filler concerning the Great Saiyaman movie).

It's as you say, the side-characters in Super have been done a great disservice.

GT didn't try to do much with the side-characters, but it did okay with what it had, and its characterisations were fine. Super shoved as many characters in as it could, characterised a ton of them very poorly(Hell, even Goku has been pretty out of character for a lot of Super), and basically just overall failed at the thing Dragon Ball has always survived on, in my view -- characterisation.
In my view, Super only really survives on hype and action, which to me is just the icing on the cake, with the actual cake being characters, comedy, decent storylines, etc. Super is basically all icing, so it just leaves me sickened, with no desire to have any more.

The way I see it, GT spent a lot of time putting its plots together, then put whatever characters made sense into it, which ended up meaning the main 3 or 4 characters got most of the focus, while everyone else generally just showed up every now and then for their big moment.
Meanwhile, Super basically just tries to throw as many characters into its arcs as possible, then they figure out how to make that a story afterward. This means there has to be a lot of contrivances to get the story to the place it needs to be in for any of this to make sense, and there's no real time for the characters to get any big moments, so in the end, the problem of just a few characters getting the focus, and the rest getting sidelined just happens all over again. I think this approach to writing could work, but they just haven't spent the time necessary to get it to work.

Still, Super does end up having more characters used, and I can see why many would prefer that to GT's approach. So... As always, everyone is entitled to their own opinions, and I apologise if I am hurting anyone's feelings; I'm just saying what I feel, and since it seems to be inverse to what many others feel, I imagine it may raise some interesting and enjoyable discussion points, so... That's what I'm hoping for. If that's not what's happening, just go ahead and ignore my bitter ranting. You'll probably be a lot happier for it. :lol:
jeffbr92 wrote:Some might even include Boo, Tenshinhan, Piccolo or even Chaozu (feel free to do that)
My favourite character in the franchise is Piccolo, and my favourite Z antagonist is Boo. I liked the couple of moments Piccolo has had, and I do love that he's Gohan's mentor again -- that tracks very nicely with the character progressions they're going for, but Piccolo and Gohan aren't really doing enough together, they just go "oh hey these two are together doing stuff again", then aside from having those nice slice of life moments with Piccolo at Gohan's house, we don't see much of him at all, then suddenly with this arc, we get a sudden "oh gohan's training is finished btw".
And Boo has basically become the puncline to a joke no one outside of Toei seems to get. To me, it seems the problem with Boo is that he's so over-powered, Toei has no idea what to do with him, and they don't realise this until the last minute, so they just do the "oh he's asleep again" stopgap measure. Highly frustrating IMO.

GT didn't do much with Piccolo or Boo, but when they got their time in the spotlight, it was well-used; Piccolo's death is one of the most powerful moments in GT, and Boo's fusion with Oob, and its effects on the tournament episode were really nice payoffs to the whole Oob/Boo situation, and allowed Mr. Satan to get a fairly sweet character moment in the tournament.
jeffbr92 wrote:GI hated that the show ended without even trying to make them look a bit older as the time had passed [...] But this is not only about aesthetics, let's talk about how their characters were poorly used, often brought to the sidelines by other characters saying they were just kids to do anything, though they relied on them in the past to defeat a genocidal monster, hypocrisy much? No to mention their whole subplot taking care of a Island was offscreen.
Honestly, I would love to see an episode or two just showing Goten and Trunks goofing off on the island.
But, aside from that, yeah, pawning them off onto the island was just dumb.
Since they trusted them to defeat Super Boo, and there's no real danger in the TOP that doesn't apply to those outside the tournament, why not just kick Roshi or Tenshinhan out of the tournament(Then have one of them take care of #17's island), and bring Goten and Trunks in instead of Freeza? It would make a ton more sense.
jeffbr92 wrote:Well, people might say: "oh but who cares about Yamcha", "he just serves to be a meme", "he's useless" opinions only, as there are people who would enjoy if he had better moments in the show than just being used a "funny" gag.
Yeah, that all comes from people who've never seen the original series. And to those people, I say: You now have at least 25 extra minutes a week now that Super's over. Give the original series a look, it's a classic, and it will show you why people like Yamcha, Tenshinhan, and Roshi so much, and it will make you understand the true brilliance of Piccolo, and you'll understand the friendship between Goku, Bulma, and Kuririn, and who/what Oolong is exactly, etc.
jeffbr92 wrote:Why not have Yamcha fighting again? Improve his techniques? Overcome his fears? Instead they prefered to reinforce the point of the fanbase seeing him just like a joke, a meme, a character that never should been taken seriously and that's sad.
Yep. Unfortunately, it looks like Toei have basically given in to Yamcha's meme status, and... Yeah, that's sad. Yamcha can be funny(He was hilarious in the first arc of DB), but the way he's been handled in Super is just character assassination. Hell, his entire attitude about "Oh hey they're going to bring me into the TOP. I should wait around for an invite" and such felt, to me, pretty damn out of character, and this hugely annoyed me. Really, I felt like someone at Toei just realised suddenly "Oh wait, what about Yamcha?", to which the reply was "Oh right... Uhh... Well, just make a stupid joke, and have them just not invite or acknowledge him at all." ...

IMO, Super's handling of the characters is just terrible, and it's yet another reason I just can't stand the show.

...

Anyway, people are probably getting a little tired of my constant slamming of Super, so unless anyone asks me to elaborate, I won't go any further with that in this thread, but I thought I'd at least offer my two cents to this discussion. I think I've offered some interesting points, but who knows, maybe this just comes off as a kinda boring, bitter rant. Oh well. :lol:
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Re: What about Super disservice with characters like Goten, Trunks and Yamcha?

Post by GreatSaiyaJeff » Thu Mar 29, 2018 10:08 pm

GT definitely handled Trunks, Goten and Buu way better.

Buu fuzing with Uub, saving Satan and Pan, and stopped Uub from defeating Mr Satan so he can continue being a hero.

Trunks was in the main cast for the first half, he was pretty much a Super Saiyan Bulma who was able to out smart Dr Myuu, saved Goku while destroying Muchii Muchii, and kicked Baby out of him in the first time he tried to take over.

Goten, while not doing much had a nice cute episode of him on a date and had a cool fight with Baby.

Piccolo, while on the whole I think Super had him do more like ToP and U6 tournament, he had a nice farewell with Gohan and he did help Goku escape from hell.

Yamcha, while RoF didn't do anything with him, I was hoping he would be in the anime, which ending 3 seemed to tease that he could have. But alas, the only thing we got from him was that amusing Baseball episode. I really did wish the rumors were true that Freeza defected to U4 and Yamcha came in to fill in. Sigh...like MistareFusion would say...poor dolt.
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Re: What about Super disservice with characters like Goten, Trunks and Yamcha?

Post by The_Destroyer » Fri Mar 30, 2018 1:51 am

I still don’t get why they didn’t just add Yamcha in Super’s version of RoF. They added Goten and Trunks to fight Tagoma, I think they could have managed Yamcha. At least they dropped the line about it “being to dangerous for him”.

Really all I want is just one good modern Yamch fight. How long are we gonna have to wait to even get one? Or are we never gonna get one at all?

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Re: What about Super disservice with characters like Goten, Trunks and Yamcha?

Post by JazzMazz » Fri Mar 30, 2018 1:54 am

The_Destroyer wrote:I still don’t get why they didn’t just add Yamcha in Super’s version of RoF. They added Goten and Trunks to fight Tagoma, I think they could have managed Yamcha. At least they dropped the line about it “being to dangerous for him”.

Really all I want is just one good modern Yamch fight. How long are we gonna have to wait to even get one? Or are we never gonna get one at all?
His not a character that deserves one, though I would say that episode 70 more than makes up for lack of presence in the show(I would say it easily trumps any of Tenshinhan's appearances in Super by a mile).

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Re: What about Super disservice with characters like Goten, Trunks and Yamcha?

Post by The_Destroyer » Fri Mar 30, 2018 2:02 am

JazzMazz wrote:
The_Destroyer wrote:I still don’t get why they didn’t just add Yamcha in Super’s version of RoF. They added Goten and Trunks to fight Tagoma, I think they could have managed Yamcha. At least they dropped the line about it “being to dangerous for him”.

Really all I want is just one good modern Yamch fight. How long are we gonna have to wait to even get one? Or are we never gonna get one at all?
His not a character that deserves one, though I would say that episode 70 more than makes up for lack of presence in the show(I would say it easily trumps any of Tenshinhan's appearances in Super by a mile).
Sorry and I get what you’re saying, but fuck the baseball episode. Hate how it’s always brought up as Yamcha’s “moment”. The dude’s a Z fighter, can’t he get his moment in a fight or something?

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Re: What about Super disservice with characters like Goten, Trunks and Yamcha?

Post by Vegeta_Sama » Fri Mar 30, 2018 2:17 am

The_Destroyer wrote:I still don’t get why they didn’t just add Yamcha in Super’s version of RoF. They added Goten and Trunks to fight Tagoma, I think they could have managed Yamcha. At least they dropped the line about it “being to dangerous for him”.

Really all I want is just one good modern Yamch fight. How long are we gonna have to wait to even get one? Or are we never gonna get one at all?
The ToP was the perfect chance for him. But instead, they decided to bring Roshi with them, and use Yamcha as a gag, even though he's the third strongest human. I don't get why they did that. Roshi's time was over a LONG time ago
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Re: What about Super disservice with characters like Goten, Trunks and Yamcha?

Post by Timetraveller » Fri Mar 30, 2018 2:20 am

Bullza wrote:Goten and Trunks had enough screen time at the time.

They took too much of Movie 10. Took up all of Movie 11 which is the worst one. Trunks took up a lot of Movie 12. Trunks had more screen time than favourites like Krillin, Piccolo and Gohan in Movie 13. They even took up way too much of the JSAT special.

They're not good characters. Episode 1 was worrying because it seemed fluke it would go that way.

Them having such a small roles in Super has been fantastic for the show.
Iirc, aren't those movies over 20 years old and not canon? So they should have small roles because they appeared in a movie from 20 years ago?

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Re: What about Super disservice with characters like Goten, Trunks and Yamcha?

Post by BlueBasilisk » Fri Mar 30, 2018 2:26 am

Vegeta_Sama wrote:
The_Destroyer wrote:I still don’t get why they didn’t just add Yamcha in Super’s version of RoF. They added Goten and Trunks to fight Tagoma, I think they could have managed Yamcha. At least they dropped the line about it “being to dangerous for him”.

Really all I want is just one good modern Yamch fight. How long are we gonna have to wait to even get one? Or are we never gonna get one at all?
The ToP was the perfect chance for him. But instead, they decided to bring Roshi with them, and use Yamcha as a gag, even though he's the third strongest human. I don't get why they did that. Roshi's time was over a LONG time ago
Roshi was brought for his techniques and his experience. And wasn't Tien the one who opted to leave Yamcha out in RoF because he thought it was dangerous?

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Re: What about Super disservice with characters like Goten, Trunks and Yamcha?

Post by Bullza » Fri Mar 30, 2018 2:38 am

Timetraveller wrote:Iirc, aren't those movies over 20 years old and not canon? So they should have small roles because they appeared in a movie from 20 years ago?
Canon or not is besides the point. They were introduced and then quickly took up too much of the media. They are the reason why Movies 10 and 11 are terrible and they were also the worst part of Movie 12 in another wise good movie.

They're annoying brats. Good as supporting characters who appear and there but should never be main characters.

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